topic Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor" in Operating System - HP-UX

Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Shahbaz_1 — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:36:58 GMT

Hi Friends,
Please give some tips, to work better and smart with VI editor.
Anything related to vi, from setting up terminal for vi editor to editing multiple files etc

Thanks in Adv

Regards
Shah

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Mateja Bezjak — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:46:23 GMT

Hi,

Here is a link to VI tutorial
http://ecn.www.ecn.purdue.edu/ECN/Documents/VI/

Regards,
Mateja

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Michael Tully — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:36:51 GMT

Here's two simple tricks that are used almost everyday to change one string to another.

Say you want to change in a file the string joe to fred.

From command mode:
:1,$s/joe/fred/g

To insert a string at the beginning
of the line
:1,$s/^/insert/g

If you wanted to do this at the end
of the line replace the '^' with a
'$'

If you wished to change multiple files
it might be best to use 'sed'

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

steven Burgess_2 — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:43:39 GMT

Sha

Search anad replace

/text - search forward direction starting from curretn location
?text search text backward
/ repeat previous search in forward dir
? repeat previous searcn backward dir
n repeat search in same dir
N repeat search in opposite dir
:s/old/new search old and replace with new
:m,ns/old/new/g search old from line m and replace it to line n with new
:s/old/new/g search old in entire file and replace with new
/text a space between the / and text, only whole words are searched
/^text search text at the beginning of a line
/text$ text at the end of a line
/(more than one word) - use parenthesis to search for more than one word

Exporting text from a current file

If you have opened file1 in the editor and want to save lines 3 to 47 as file3, use the command :3,47w file3

to save the opened file as a new file :w filename

to open multiple files

vi file1 file2 file3

vi options are configured in $HOME/.exrc

to set line number , enter in .exrc

set nu
set showmode

to show current mode

Theres loads more

Steve

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Michael Tully — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:44:15 GMT

Here is a link to some information regarding 'sed'

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/sed/

To really learn some powerful text editing and programming you may also want to look at perl.

Start here:
http://www.perl.org/
http://www.cpan.org

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

steven Burgess_2 — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:44:55 GMT

Shah

I have attached a whole load of sed examples

Steve

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

steven Burgess_2 — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:46:06 GMT

Here they are

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Chris Wilshaw — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 08:41:34 GMT

typing

:set list

displays non-printable characters (hidden control characters etc). Can be invaluable in debugging a faulty script or data.
-------------------------------------

use J to join append the next line to the end of the current line.

-------------------------------------
Cut and paste file section to new file

At first line, hit
m
where the buffer is a letter

Go to end of section you want to copy, and type

"ay'

You should now see a message telling you that a number of lines have been yanked.

type

:e
to start a new file, then

"ap

to paste the contents of the buffer to the new file.
--------------------------------------

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 10:21:35 GMT

:set all
to view special settings

ie
:set noautoindent
to avoid cut paste problems..

Also get a shell with

:!ksh

exit
(to return to vi)

:!ls /tmp

or any other command to run a command.

Later,
Bill

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Frank Slootweg — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 13:00:19 GMT

See also the standard HP-UX documentation, i.e. for example "Using the vi Editor" in the "Using Your HP Workstation" (or similar) manual.

For on-line versions, see <>.

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Martin Johnson — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 13:03:25 GMT

:.= show current line number
:= show how many lines in the file.

HP has a book "The Ultimate guide to the VI and EX Text Editors" that will tell you everything you ever want to know about vi.

HTH
Marty

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Jeanine Kone — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 13:05:51 GMT

I like to use:

:r filename

to insert the contents of the specified file into the current file you are editing. I use this alot to add headers and standard env setups to my scripts.

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

BKUMAR — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 19:42:10 GMT

Hi

VVVV IMP to open a large files

[
vi
:set dir=/
:e

]

so that you have to set the largefilesystem with enough space of your largefile....so vi default searches for /var/tmp....if it doesnt have enought space of your largefile....

it wont open it completely and if you save it accidentally....it will be a problem

take care

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Tony Romero — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 20:21:05 GMT

Use the following to convert alpha chars from lower to upper case.

sed '1,3y/abcde/ABCDE/' filename

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

John Dvorchak — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 20:44:09 GMT

A very simple one that I seem to use every session is move to the 1st line in the file:

/1G

Last line in the file:
/G

Search for a string or number etc..:
/keyword_that_you_want_to_search_for
n (to repeat the last find forward)
N (to repeat the last find backward)

Take me to the end of the line and put me in insert mode so I can add text:
A

All of the responses were great but I find that these are the most used, plus search and replace already given to you.

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

harry d brown jr — Tue, 02 Jul 2002 00:19:00 GMT

http://www.talug.org/minutes/19990310/lesson/lesson.html

http://computips.virtualave.net/tips/vi_commands.html

http://www.roxanne.org/vi.html

How many of us have done this:

ls -l /somedir > /tmp/dirlst.txt
then
vi /tmp/dirlst.txt

when we could have done this

vi /tmp/dirlst.txt
!!ls -l /somedir

live free or die
harry

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

kish_1 — Tue, 02 Jul 2002 02:16:48 GMT

1.if you want interchange the letter when you make mistake while typeing
Ans: xp

2. if you want opn a last line of file

Ans: vi + /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Robert Sipe — Tue, 02 Jul 2002 02:47:04 GMT

with regards to search and replace

:%s/old/new/gc

Where the g is global and the c is confirm before commit.

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Robert Sipe — Tue, 02 Jul 2002 03:09:56 GMT

if you need to include a calendar into your vi session

:! /usr/bin/cal [arg]

of course that will work with any shell command.

Re: Some Tips & Tricks for "VI Editor"

Ralph Grothe — Tue, 02 Jul 2002 06:48:32 GMT

Hi,

I guess one could fill a whole book with cute little vi tricks.
Here are some things I appreceate with vi.
Maybe they have already been addressed?

Shell escapes are a really nice feature (but sometimes dreaded by paranoid sysadmins ;-)

You have already seen the bang of the ex commands

:! ll /var/adm

But what I think has been missed is the combination with ex's read command.
How about dumping the output of a command in your current vi buffer?

:r! ll /var/adm

This come really handy to me, when I am too lazy to type endless paths to commands that usually don't reside under /usr/bin

:r! which perl

Then you can escape to the shell without leaving your vi session when you have several commands to issue

:sh

After your commands type exit to get back to your vi session.

Have you already discovered the power of mappings?
Edit your .exrc file, and insert a mapping like this:
(This is to insert a standard Perl header when pressing the F1 key)

map ^[[001q :r!which perl^M^[I#!^[A -w^M^Muse strict;^M^M

You get the control characters when you typ Ctrl+v (or C^V) together, which quotes the next key.